Your body works to convert the food you eat
into energy needed for all of its functions including, breathing, cell repair,
circulating blood and growing. Through
the metabolic process, oxygen combines with calories to fuel the body based on
need. Because weight loss depends on your
ability to burn more calories than you consume, it’s important to understand
the factors that may affect your metabolism.

The calories your body needs to function while
at rest determines the, “basal metabolic rate”.
About 70 % of the calories burned each day are from this state.

Factors that affect BMR include:

Body composition and size-Larger bodies with more muscle mass burn more
calories.

Gender-
Males of the same age and weight generally have more muscle than women do and
less body fat.

Age- As
we age, muscle decreases and fat accounts for more weight. This slows down calorie burning.

These factors also affect how many calories we
burn each day:

Thermogenesis-This is the overall process our body undertakes each
day to digest, absorb, transport and store the food we consume. This can burn between 100 and 800 calories
per day.

Physical activity-Everything you do, whether it’s walking, riding a
bike, or grocery shopping accounts for the rest of the calories you burn in a
day. Climbing stairs and doing household
chores contributes to calorie burning as well.